Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

  CONGRESS DEFERRED ANY DECISION Ibid., 277.

  LEAVING PHILADELPHIA MB, I, 411.

  OPENED A CASK OF 1770 MADEIRA Ibid., 413.

  RECEIVED A NEW PAMPHLET PTJ, I, 286.

  “THE CAUSE OF AMERICA” Craig Nelson, Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (New York, 2006), 85.

  NINE · THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS

  “FOR GOD’S SAKE” PTJ, I, 287.

  THE BELLS RUNG Harlow Giles Unger, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot (New York, 2000), 242.

  ABOUT SEVEN O’CLOCK MB, I, 415.

  ASKED THE REVEREND CHARLES CLAY Ibid.

  BURIED AT MONTICELLO Kern, Jeffersons at Shadwell, 243–44.

  AN “ATTACK OF MY PERIODICAL HEADACHE” TDLTJ, 184.

  HE WAS “OBLIGED TO AVOID READING” PTJ, VI, 570.

  STRANGE TIME Ibid., I, 297. A week after his mother’s death, Jefferson received letters from Williamsburg about declaring independence. “The notion of independency seems to spread fast in this colony,” said James McClurg on April 6, 1776. (Ibid.)

  LIVED WITH THE HEADACHE Ibid., 296.

  PAYING A MIDWIFE TO DELIVER MB, I, 416.

  COLLECTED MONEY Ibid.

  LEFT MONTICELLO FOR PHILADELPHIA Ibid., 417.

  ARRIVING SEVEN DAYS LATER Ibid., 418.

  “I AM HERE” PTJ, I, 292.

  ON MAY 23 HE TOOK Ibid., 293. See also MB, I, 418.

  THREE-STORY BOARDINGHOUSE Thomas Donaldson, The House in Which Thomas Jefferson Wrote the Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia, 1898), examines the sundry claims of different houses but concludes Graff’s establishment was home to Jefferson as he wrote. For details about the house, see John H. Hazelton, The Declaration of Independence: Its History (New York, 1970), 149–54.

  HE INITIALLY FELT OUT OF PHASE PTJ, I, 293. “I have been so long out of the political world that I am almost a new man in it,” Jefferson wrote Page on May 17, 1776. (Ibid.) But he knew this: Not every colony was in the same place in terms of its determination to declare independence, an irrevocable step. Foreign alliances were essential to the success of the American cause, and “for [independence] several colonies, and some of them weighty, are not yet quite ripe. I hope ours is and that they will tell us so.” (Ibid., 294.)

  THAT THE “UNITED COLONIES” Ibid., 298–99.

  BEGAN THE NEXT DAY Ibid., 309.

  SOME REPRESENTATIVES ARGUED Ibid. Jefferson heard John Dickinson and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, Robert Livingston of New York, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, and others argue for delay. The chief issue lay with the middle colonies—Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. (South Carolina, too, was reluctant.) Recording the thrust of the argument, Jefferson wrote that they said the time was not yet right, for they believed the Congress should not “take any capital step till the voice of the people drove us into it.” (Ibid.) The reaction had been bad enough the previous month with John Adams’s May 15 resolution “for suppressing the exercise of all powers derived from the crown [which] had shown, by the ferment into which it had thrown these middle colonies, that they had not yet accommodated their minds to a separation from the mother country.” (Ibid.)

  A PRECIPITOUS DECLARATION Ibid., 309–10.

  “FOREIGN POWERS WOULD” Ibid., 310. There was an even darker possibility: How could the Congress be confident that Britain’s rivals would be inclined to throw themselves in the balance with a newly independent America? Surely, the anti-declaration members suggested, “France and Spain had reason to be jealous of that rising power which would one day certainly strip them of all their American possessions,” which could mean that “it was more likely they should form a connection with the British court, who, if they should find themselves unable otherwise to extricate themselves from their difficulties, would agree to a partition of our territories, restoring Canada to France, and the Floridas to Spain, to accomplish for themselves a recovery of these colonies.” (Ibid.)

  JOHN ADAMS, RICHARD HENRY LEE, GEORGE WYTHE Ibid., 311.

  “NO GENTLEMAN” Ibid. Arguing that the only truly problematic colonies were Pennsylvania and Maryland, the pro-declaration delegates suggested “the backwardness of these two colonies might be ascribed partly to the influence of proprietary power and connections, and partly to their having not yet been attacked by the enemy.” (Ibid., 312.)

  A COMPROMISE WAS PROPOSED Ibid., 313. Adams, Wythe, Lee, and their allies were practical men. Understanding how quickly opinion was moving, they did not try to force their will on the Congress—at least not that day.

  WERE “NOT YET MATURED” Ibid.

  ADAMS THOUGHT JEFFERSON SHOULD DO IT Kaminiski, Founders on the Founders, 287–88.

  A SECRET CONVERSATION Hazelton, Declaration of Independence, 9–11.

  “WE WERE ALL SUSPECTED” Ibid., 10.

  “THIS WAS PLAIN DEALING” The Works of John Adams, II, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1856), 513.

  “YOU INQUIRE WHY SO YOUNG A MAN” Ibid.

  THE ENSUING CONVERSATION WITH JEFFERSON Ibid.

  WAS “NOT TO FIND OUT” TJ to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825 (LOC). Extract published at Papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series Digital Archive, www.monticello.org/familyletters (accessed 2011).

  SECOND-FLOOR ROOMS Hazelton, Declaration of Independence, 149–51. Robert G. Parkinson, “The Declaration of Independence,” in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 44–59, is a valuable essay; it is particularly good on the (necessarily, given the practical demands of the political moment) collaborative nature of the writing of the Declaration.

  HE SLEPT IN ONE ROOM Hazelton, Declaration of Independence, 149–51.

  “NEITHER AIMING AT ORIGINALITY” TJ to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825 (LOC). Extract published at Papers of Thomas Jefferson Retirement Series Digital Archive, www.monticello.org/familyletters (accessed 2011).

  “WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS” PTJ, I, 315, 413–33.

  “SELF-EVIDENT” WAS FRANKLIN’S Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, 312.

  BE SENT “TO THE SEVERAL ASSEMBLIES” Maier, American Scripture, 130.

  CONSTITUENCIES INCLUDED READERS Ibid., 130–32.

  MANY OF WHICH WERE OBSCURE Ibid., 107.

  JEFFERSON’S INFLUENCES WERE MANIFOLD See, for instance, Maier, American Scripture; Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City, N.Y., 1978); and Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York, 1970).

  JAMES WILSON’S PAMPHLET Hatzenbuehler, “Growing Weary in Well-Doing,” 12–14.

  GEORGE MASON’S DECLARATION OF RIGHTS Ibid., 14–20.

  “THE ENCLOSED PAPER” PTJ, I, 404.

  WHOSE GOUT AND BOILS Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, 310.

  “A MEETING WE ACCORDINGLY HAD” The Works of John Adams, II, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 514.

  INTRODUCED ON FRIDAY, JUNE 28 PTJ, I, 313–14.

  “THE PUSILLANIMOUS IDEA” Ibid., 314.

  “THE CLAUSE, TOO, REPROBATING” Ibid., 314–15.

  HE FAIRLY WRITHED Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, 313.

  FRANKLIN TRIED TO SOOTHE HIS YOUNG COLLEAGUE Ibid. Franklin deployed an old anecdote about a hatmaker who had wanted a sign that read “John Thompson, hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,” with a picture of a hat. His friends so pecked away at the sign it wound up with only the hatmaker’s name and the picture of a hat. (Ibid.)

  “I HAVE MADE IT A RULE” Ibid., 310.

  VOTED TO ADOPT THE RESOLUTION William Hogeland, Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1–July 4, 1776 (New York, 2012), 173.

  THE TEMPERATURE WAS 76 JHT, I, 229.

  OVERNIGHT THE PHILADELPHIA PRINTER JOHN DUNLAP Tr
anscript of Publishing the Declaration of Independence, LOC, http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/journey/declaration-transcript.html (accessed 2012).

  BENJAMIN TOWNE, PUBLISHER OF THE PENNSYLVANIA EVENING POST Ibid.

  THE NEWS WAS ANNOUNCED JHT, I, 229.

  IN FRONT OF THE STATE HOUSE Hogeland, Declaration, 179.

  “GOD BLESS THE FREE STATES” Ibid.

  HORSEFLIES BUZZED THROUGH Parton, Life, 191.

  “THE SILK-STOCKINGED LEGS” Ibid.

  JEFFERSON ALWAYS LOVED Randall, Jefferson, I, 153.

  “GERRY, WHEN THE HANGING COMES” Ibid.

  “A THEATRICAL SHOW” Kaminski, Founders on the Founders, 315.

  “JEFFERSON RAN AWAY” Ibid.

  BENTHAM SCOFFED David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), 173–86, reprints the text of Bentham’s “Short Review of the Declaration,” which was originally published in London in 1776.

  “ABSURD AND VISIONARY” Ibid., 173.

  “ ‘ALL MEN’ ” Ibid., 174.

  “YOU WILL JUDGE” PTJ, I, 456. The colleague was Richard Henry Lee. In reply, Lee said that he wished “the manuscript had not been mangled as it is. It is wonderful, and passing pitiful, that the rage of change should be so unhappily applied. However the thing is in its nature so good, that no cookery can spoil the dish for the palates of freemen.” (Ibid., 471.)

  “I AM HIGHLY PLEASED” Ibid., 470. See also Robert M. S. McDonald, “Thomas Jefferson’s Changing Reputation as Author of the Declaration of Independence: The First Fifty Years,” Journal of the Early Republic, 19, no. 2 (Summer, 1999): 169–95.

  TEN · THE PULL OF DUTY

  “I PRAY YOU TO COME” PTJ, I, 477.

  “REBELLION TO TYRANTS” Ibid., 677–79.

  SUFFERED A DISASTROUS MISCARRIAGE Scharff, Women Jefferson Loved, 118. By now Patty’s health was a perennial issue for Jefferson. “I am sorry the situation of my domestic affairs renders it indispensably necessary that I should solicit the substitution of some other person here in my room,” Jefferson wrote on June 30, 1776. “The delicacy of the House will not require me to enter minutely into the private causes which render this necessary: I trust they will be satisfied I would not have urged it again were it not necessary.” (PTJ, I, 408.)

  “I WISH I COULD” PTJ, I, 458.

  “A FAVORITE WITH” TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/martha-wayles-skelton-jefferson (accessed 2012).

  THE ONSLAUGHT OF MILITARY REPORTS PTJ, I, 433–74.

  FRAUGHT WITH FEARS Ibid., 475–76, describes the case of Carter Braxton, a Virginia politician who had fallen from popular favor. Braxton’s wife’s family, the Corbins, included three brothers with sympathies to the Crown. Rumors in Williamsburg, William Fleming reported to Jefferson, alleged unspecified instances of “extreme[ly] imprudent, and inimical conduct” on the part of Mrs. Braxton, which “affected his political character exceedingly.” (Ibid., 475.) The conduct appears to have been remarks protesting the imprisonment of her brother in Williamsburg. (Alonzo Thomas Dill, Carter Braxton, Virginia Signer: A Conservative in Revolt [Lanham, Md., 1983], 69–73.)

  A LOYALIST PLOT IN NEW YORK Ibid., 412–13. “One fact is known of necessity, that one of the General’s lifeguard being thoroughly convicted was to be shot last Saturday,” wrote Jefferson on July 1. (Ibid., 412.)

  THE MAYOR OF NEW YORK Chernow, Washington, 903–4.

  THE BRITISH, MEANWHILE, WERE PTJ, I, 412. “General Howe with some ships (we know not how many) is arrived at the Hook, and, as is said, has landed some horse on the Jersey shore,” wrote Jefferson. (Ibid.)

  “OUR CAMPS RECRUIT SLOWLY” Ibid., 477. There was a delay in the flow of British troops to serve under Howe, but Jefferson noted that “our army [in] Canada” was “in a shattered condition.” He was frustrated by the pace of the Congress’s post-declaration business of forming a government. “The minutiae of the Confederation have hitherto engaged us; the great points of representation, boundaries, taxation etc being left open,” he told Lee. It was time, he said, for Lee to relieve him. “For God’s sake, for your country’s sake, and for my sake, come.” (Ibid.) There was one welcome piece of news from Virginia: the defeat of Dunmore at Gwynn’s Island. “This was a glorious affair,” John Page told Jefferson on July 15, 1776. “Lord Dunmore has had a most complete Drubbing.” (Ibid., 462.) Richard Henry Lee cheered the “disgrace of our African Hero at Gwynn’s Island.” (Ibid., 471.)

  “IT IS A PAINFUL SITUATION” Ibid., 412.

  “IF ANY DOUBT” Ibid., 412–13. The vicissitudes of politics were much in evidence, and the defeat of two Virginia delegates for reelection to the Congress troubled some observers. “We are now engaged beyond the power of withdrawing, and I think cannot fail of success in happiness, if we do not defeat ourselves by intrigue and canvassing to be uppermost in offices of power and lucre,” Edmund Pendleton wrote Jefferson. There was, Pendleton said, “much of this” in the sessions at Williamsburg in which Benjamin Harrison and Carter Braxton were denied new terms. (Ibid., 471–72.) Harrison was eliminated for fairly mundane reasons: He had championed the appointment of an official physician opposed by another faction, and his foes took him out. (Ibid., 475.)

  A WAR WITH THE CHEROKEES Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 54–60.

  JEFFERSON’S VIEWS OF NATIVE AMERICANS Ibid., 1–20, offers a good overview. See also Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, I (Lincoln, Neb., 1984), 5–88, for an account of the colonial, revolutionary, and early post-revolutionary periods. He believed them more capable than blacks. (Jefferson, Writings, 266.) “The Indians … will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit,” Jefferson wrote in Query XIV of Notes on the State of Virginia. “They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as to prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.” (Ibid.) See also Andrew Cayton, “Thomas Jefferson and Native Americans,” in Cogliano, ed., A Companion to Thomas Jefferson, 237–52.

  A GENUINE CURIOSITY Jefferson, Writings, 218–29.

  “NOTHING WILL REDUCE” PTJ, I, 485–86.

  A PROPOSED CONSTITUTION FOR VIRGINIA Ibid., 329–86.

  HE CLOSELY FOLLOWED THE CONGRESS’S DEBATES Jefferson, Writings, 24–32.

  “THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION” Ibid., 24.

  DRAFT RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR THE CONGRESS PTJ, I, 456–58.

  HE AND JOHN ADAMS ONCE DISAGREED McCullough, John Adams, 113–14.

  “I RECEIVE BY EVERY POST” PTJ, I, 477.

  A POSTSCRIPT BEGGING LEE Ibid. The next day, writing John Page, he said: “I purpose to leave this place the 11th of August, having so advised Mrs. Jefferson by last post, and every letter brings me such an account of the state of her health, that it is with great pain I can stay here till then.” (Ibid., 483.) Lee was delayed, preventing Jefferson from keeping his promise to Patty to leave on August 11. (Ibid., 486.)

  TO KEEP VIRGINIA’S QUORUM Ibid., 483.

  “I AM UNDER THE PAINFUL NECESSITY” Ibid., 486. There was some talk that Patty was on the mend. “I wish you as pleasant a journey as the season will admit,” wrote Edmund Pendleton, “and hope you’ll find Mrs. Jefferson recovered, as I had the pleasure of hearing in Goochland she was better.” (Ibid., 508.)

  A SEAL FOR THE NEW NATION Ibid., 494–97.

  “PHARAOH SITTING IN AN OPEN CHARIOT” Ibid., 495.

  SO WHY DID THE COLONISTS I am indebted to EOL; J.
G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J., 1975); Joyce Oldham Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); and Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution.

  LONGED TO BE IN THE THICK OF SHAPING THE GOVERNMENT PTJ, I, 292.

  HER FREQUENT PREGNANCIES Gordon-Reed, Hemingses of Monticello, 141–43.

  “I HOPE YOU’LL GET CURED” PTJ, I, 489.

  TO USE THE WYTHE HOUSE Ibid., 585.

  THE HANDSOME BRICK HOUSE Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, http://www.history.org/almanack/places/hb/hbwythe.cfm (accessed 2011).

  ELEVEN · AN AGENDA FOR LIBERTY

  “THOSE WHO EXPECT” Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 4, September 11, 1777.

  “IT IS ERROR ALONE” Jefferson, Writings, 286.

  CHOSE TO ENTRUST THE MISSION PTJ, I, 521–22.

  STAKES FOR THE COUNTRY Ibid., 522–23. “With this country, everything depends upon it,” said Richard Henry Lee on September 27, 1776. (Ibid., 522.)

  RUSSIA MIGHT DISPATCH Ibid., 522.

  “TO ACQUAINT ME” Ibid., 523.

  ASKED THE MESSENGER TO AWAIT Ibid., 524. The messenger bearing Hancock’s letter arrived on October 8, 1776; Jefferson’s reply to Hancock is dated October 11. (Ibid.)

  PATTY COULD BE WITH HIM Ibid., 604. See also MB, I, 426.

  “IT WOULD ARGUE” Ibid., 524.

  “NO CARES FOR MY OWN PERSON” Ibid. Jefferson was so anxious about missing out on the service in France that he told Silas Deane, who was to serve with Franklin, “I feel within myself the same kind of desire of an hour’s conversation with yourself or Dr. Franklin which I have often had for a confabulation with those who have passed the irredeemable bourne.” (Ibid., II, 25.) By framing the matter in such terms—equating time with Deane and Franklin with unobtainable time with the dead—he invested the work in France with the highest possible meaning, equal to his love for his parents, his sister Jane, Dabney Carr, Peyton Randolph, and his lost children. He felt the loss of the French opportunity that deeply.

  A REMARKABLE LEGISLATIVE AGENDA FOR LIBERTY JHT, I, 235–85.